wanted to make a poll (an anonymous one ;D ) but there doesn’t seem to be the feature here.
So guys, how often do you get your system infected with worms and viruses and trojans and what else…I personally had my system infected just once in 11 years (since I acquired my first PC), and that was minimal, just a few java files were affected. That was also the day I decided not to use Internet Explorer anymore. The infection came from an active X (although a dialog prompted me to block it and believe me I did), I was already running Firefox 1.0 off and on, 1.5 was about to come out, and I switched.
I was playing with fire two years ago. Avast missed the virus. Can’t recover. Used a backup of the full partition to get system back.
There is an option to start a poll here in avast forums.
yeah I thought I saw this option before and couldn’t find it now. I’ll edit the first post to find out.
edit: so it’s too late for the poll; you can’t add one once the thread’s been started without it.
About 1 years ago,I was looking for some wallpapers on some site and it redirected me a rogue site.It told me I had 32 virus so I download it.I still remember that rogue was called antivirus 2009.
Never since using avast for over 5 years, however, I practice safe hex, take proactive precautions and exercise a degree of common sense, if it is to good to be true then that is likely to be the case. So I don’t really expect to get infected, but should it ever happen, a robust back-up and recovery strategy should haul your a** out of the fire.
Polls can be anonymous, you just have to be logged on to vote, in the same way you have to be logged on to post, it doesn’t say who has voted in what way, just if they have been infected in the last x months/years.
That however, doesn’t say if that is with avast installed or another AV or multiple AVs. Or if you are reckless in your on-line activities or where that infection came from, in-line, usb, network, etc. So it isn’t a simple question that can be put to a poll and have answers that can be collated according to AV, method of infection, risk level of the activity, etc…
I was just kidding about the anonymous thing; it’s just that I can’t add a poll anymore now that I started the thread without any. Was expecting to find it in the post options, like on VBulletin. Just not used to SMF anymore, no big deal 
To the last part of your post, it still is interesting to have an idea of the proportion of people getting infections on their systems, well protected or not. Being safer with Avast or another AV is one thing, getting frequent infections or alerts is another, only relevant to the surfer habits.
I should have asked my question differently in fact, and change it to how often is your system under virus attack…I don’t want to modify it now as people have already started to answer to the question I asked, so may be another time.
edit: do you guys get that green flash when editing and saving a post ??? lol
I’ve been working with computers since 1985 (BBS). Internet since 1996. Got one virus when looking for victorian pics on internet. Didn’t have any AV back then. Been with Avast! for many years now. 
Once, and it was the reason for coming here.
A file from Windows live messenger which my sister allowed and clicked on…
She shouldnt click on any link in msn. There a lot exploit that can try to steal her password.
Last infection I had was pre-internet, and that goes back nearly 15 years. Don’t know what it was or where it came from, but the service tech said it pretty well fried my mobo.
Well, she knows now…
Hi Logos,
Last malware incident brought me avast and then I found my way here. At that time I swore to myself that I would learn so much about malware and security it would not happen again. It did not apart from some tracking cookies,
polonus
Since I have begun to use computers, 0, which is, at least, as far as I know… ;D I’m wondering if someone is looking at my computer screen from somewhere on the earth, laughing at me.
Those were the good old days:
http://www.research.ibm.com/antivirus/timeline.htm#Where
I was working at IBM in technical support for the new IBM PC and we were alerted to this new malicious thing and IBM brought out its short lived anti virus application.
For the last 10 months, Ive been infected a couple of times but luckily avast sprang into action so was windows defender^^
The infections were zlob, trojans, worms, and etc…^^
Yet im still living a life free of those unstable concoctions^^
-AnimeLover^^
I think it was 1999…
About the same ('99), it was a zlob variant.
Security combo was AVG, AdAware demand scanner, and no common sense. (Like thousands of other computer users. Maybe millions.)
Made a decision to learn more about security from that day on. A bit like Polonus (on page 1). I don’t think I’ve learned as much as him, but I’ve learned enough about securing a Windows OS that I haven’t been infected since. And enough to help folk here with basic problems, and that’s rewarding.
A lot of the learning has been on this forum, and also Wilders, and Castlecops when they were around. Good times.
The first anti-virus I used was Dr. Solomon and then, I shifted to Norton. Since I hadn’t seen none of them catch malware and that I began to wonder why I should pay for these watchdogs, I ended up with some free anti-virus products, one of which is Avast!. Even till now, Avira has only warned me about some false positives and Avast! has caught nothing but eicar test files. I do Kaspersky online scan at times but it has caught nothing on our computers, either.
You may find these pieces of advice here useful.
Castlecops… 
I totally agree that learning about recent security issues are good help, too.
In my 11 years on line using exclusively Internet Explorer and Outlook Express, I have never been infected or hacked. For the first 4 years I was on dialup and never had a firewall, just McAfee AV at first, and then Norton. The last 5 years I used Norton Internet Security until June of this year when I switched to Comodo because it was free. The 2 years in between I was using the XP firewall and Norton AV. I did get the old Navidad virus with it’s delayed payload back in 2000 or so, but a scheduled scan with Norton caught it the day before it would have triggered and removed it.
I am not paranoid about security and still only use a Firewall and AV. The other machine here uses the XP Firewall and Avast! Home AV.
My family members and quite many of my acquaintances are, like that, although my family members are in the same network as mine and their machines receive regular “maintenance” from me.